


The Power Of Belief

by shewhoguards



Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-20
Updated: 2016-10-20
Packaged: 2018-08-23 15:26:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8332816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shewhoguards/pseuds/shewhoguards
Summary: Sarah thought she was doing the right thing by teaching her younger brother about the dangers of the Goblin King. She didn't realise the danger of planting such thoughts into a small child's head.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PhynixCaskey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PhynixCaskey/gifts).



  
_“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”_   
  
_― G.K. Chesterton_

 

 

When Sarah opened her eyes to find the Goblin King standing in her bedroom she found herself oddly unsurprised. It was something she had so many dreams – so many nightmares! – about that it seemed completely out of the ordinary when it actually happened.

“You have no power over me,” she said automatically because that, after all, was what always worked in the dreams. Sometimes she forgot the words, sometimes it was impossible to speak them but always they worked in the end.

Never in her dream world had Jareth smiled quite so calmly, his grin sharp as his gaze went straight past her. “Don’t I now?” That smile had teeth, longer and sharper than Sarah remembered them. “ _He_ believes I do.”

Sarah sat up in bed, turning to see the small pyjama-clad figure by her door. His face was transfixed, caught by a fear so great that he seemed unable to move. “Toby,” she said. He didn’t seem to hear her. “Toby, go back to bed.”

Jareth laughed, and that laugh was familiar, sending a chill down her. The rest of him though – Sarah looked more closely. The rest of him, not so much. It wasn’t just his teeth that seemed sharper, nor just that he seemed taller. There was something less ethereal about this Jareth, more feral animal.

“You used to be more beautiful,” she said, hoping to distract him.

“You used to want me to be,” he said, and his smile jeered at her; the little girl who had nearly allowed herself to be seduced by a Goblin King. “You were so determined to have a handsome king in a world designed to be unfair to you, and you alone, how could I help be anything else?” He smiled almost fondly at the little boy. “But Toby – ah, what have you been telling him? Tales of fairies that bite, of goblins that are cruel, of creatures that steal small children in the night.” He held out his hand to Toby and the boy took a step towards it as though hypnotised. “I usually like them younger, it makes it easier for them to believe the correct things. But you seem to have done my work for me nicely, Sarah, thank you for that.”

He sketched a slight bow towards her in mocking gratitude. Horrified Sarah snatched at her brother but her hand passed through him, the child no more substantial than mist. She could hear her own voice, teaching him with the best of intentions – telling him about the cruelty of the Goblin King, the danger of wishing without thinking, the other world that none but them would ever know about.

She had thought that she was warning him, but in the mind of a four year old perhaps she had only been building a new and improved Goblin King, more terrible and frightening than he had ever been in reality.

She fell back on the only thing that had ever worked. “Toby, tell him that he has no power over you!” But Toby was silent, helpless as a puppet as Jareth pulled him towards the window. “ _Tell_ him!”

“And once he catches you,” Jareth quoted back at her, words meant as a caution now seeming the most dreadful of mistakes, “there’s no escape unless someone comes to rescue you.” He laughed again, taunting her like a slow child. “Oh Sarah, did you forget that stories have power? And you told him this one so well.”

He bowed to her again and they were at the window now. Sarah realised, with a sinking feeling, that this was all far too familiar. “Good luck!”

“Toby!” she called again desperately, all too conscious that time was short. In a world where stories had power there was only one weapon she could give him. “Toby, remember the end of the stories! _The good guys always win!”_ Did he hear? For a moment she could have sworn that his eyes flickered towards her and then they were gone in a flutter of wings. There was nothing for it but to go back into the labyrinth once more.

 

 

 


End file.
